Melodic, beat-driven electronica from a shed in the UK

Category Archives: Equipment

Have decided I needed a few more HP’s for drum synth modules, both to expand my sound palette and add extra modulation sources. So, I purchased a Make Noise 104HP Skiff and have just finished filling it up – isn’t she pretty!

Still want to revisit using Arcade buttons as triggers in the future, but for now this is providing a lot of random percussion fun! This is thanks in large part, to the three Erica Synths Pico modules which give a nice mix of controlled and uncontrolled triggers, lfo’s, sample and hold and noise. And all in bite-sized 3HP chunks!

The Bastl Instruments Tea Kick is another of the new modules and it sounds lovely and clear with a real weight behind it, but still very musical too. This is in the new, aluminium styling, rather than the wooden front panels Bastl normally use but it looks amazing.

CV Pal is being used with Max For Live to emulate the Mutable Instruments Grids, and a great job it does at that too! Dead simple to set up too, so will put together a video on that perhaps. You can get the CV Pal in a kit at Thonk for under £30 (plus VAT) at the moment, and it’s well worth looking into.

Well, I’m pleased to say, the surgery was a success and the DR-110 finally has some kick drum oomph. Lot’s of it actually.

I’ve made quite a few modifications and added a bunch of knobs; there is a Snare Decay, then a Snare fizz/snap mix – lot’s of sound adjustment potential with these two. On the next row we have clap and hi-hat pitch. All four modifications replaced the existing fixed resistors with 47k pots as per the suggestions here

Then a row of switches to increase the clap and snare decay envelopes, making them sound distant and echoey. This was acheived by piggy-backing 2.2uf electro capacitors in series with the original capacitors. I got the idea from this post, but rather than make permanent modifications, I wired them to switches so that I could retain the original sounds too.

And finally, two more switches for Thud 1 and Thud 2 respectively. The first switch puts a 4.7uf electro capacitor across r70, which gives a subtle boost to the kick. The second switch adds a further two parallel 4.7uf capacitors across r70 that gives it a nice 808 like roundness.

I’ll put some before and after loops up in the next couple of days so you can hear the effect for yourself.

Definitely worth buying one of these if you see one for a reasonable price.